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New York's Melky Mesa safely slides under the tag of Pittsburgh Pirates second baseman Josh Harrison in an exhibition game Sunday.

TAMPA

Home has become a dark, cold, frosty place. A long winter can do that to you. So can dragging three bags of luggage through four inches of snow that, it is very possible, will only be half gone when I have to haul them back into the house in a week.

Here, there are palm trees swaying in the breeze. On the luggage belt, three different sets of golf clubs rolled past me. There were clouds looming overhead, and you can practically smell the rain in the air. But that's fine. Back at dark, cold, frosty home, it has been a long time since anything besides winter's bite tickled our nostrils.

How this feels, somehow, like we're getting back to normal in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre isn't escaping me, though.

Today, I'll hop in my rental car, fight the morning traffic on Dale Mabry Boulevard, pull into that parking lot adjacent to Raymond James Stadium, stroll through the gates of the New York Yankees' minor league complex on Himes Avenue, and do something that matters again to the people of Northeast Pennsylvania.

I'll tell them about a Triple-A baseball team.

I'll report about how a young third baseman named David Adams looks in his attempt to convert to a position where he could be the Yankees' future.

I'll tell you about what the pitches from young prospect Brett Marshall look like to opposing hitters. I'll see if Mark Montgomery's slider really is the overpowering offering scouts insist it is.

I'll write about guys like Corban Joseph and Ronnier Mustelier and Melky Mesa, all of whom shined in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre uniforms a season ago, even if they were out of the sights - and maybe minds - of the fans back home.

For sure, this will feel normal. But none of it is.

This is a new team. This is a new era. Even the players coming back who aren't technically new will be new because, well, fans back home have never really seen them. It's certainly possible that, save pitcher Dellin Betances and catcher Austin Romine, there won't be a single player on the Triple-A opening day roster who has ever played for the home team at PNC Field.

We all know why, of course. Because nothing is the same back home. The stadium these players ultimately will come back to won't remotely resemble the one the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees last played in those last bleak days in September of 2011. A $43.3 million renovation that will make PNC Field arguably the best minor league park in the country made sure of that.

They won't even be the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees when they come back.

They'll be the RailRiders, and a well-timed and much-needed rebranding made sure of that.

New team. New era. Those themes are likely to dwarf whatever happens on the field in the public eye this year, and that's only fair. Because the dull, stagnant, stale experience at the old ballpark had a way of overshadowing everything good that usually happened on the field.

But with respect to the men and women who have devoted the last year or more of their lives to making sure PNC Field got the facelift it needed, and to president and general manager Rob Crain, who has worked tirelessly since he was hired in July to make baseball feel like just a few warm-up pitches away from being here, the surest signs it is back are the ones here in Tampa.

The smell of spring. The crack of bats and mitts. The hope of a championship. The uncertainty of what lies ahead - good or bad - for players whose dreams rest on what happens once they get back to their new home.

That's what always signals baseball season is here. We have a summer to talk about baseball stadiums and the fruits of $43.3 million worth of renovations and months of planning toward experience changes.

Right now, though, it's about the game, and that's what I've missed most.

Before some of the players in Tampa right now break camp and head to Moosic by month's end, this franchise will have gone 578 days between home games.

That's a long winter, indeed.

DONNIE COLLINS covers the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders for The Times-Tribune. Contact him at dcollins@timesshamrock.com, read his blog at blogs.thetimes-tribune.com/railriders/, or follow him on Twitter @RailRidersTT

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